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Only
in America?
by
Barbara Sumner Burstyn
October
6, 2003
It's
a strange feeling to wake up one average, middle-class North American morning
and realize your beliefs could get you killed. Not in a random, drive-by,
developing-world, terrorist-bombing kind of way. But in an officially
sanctioned, totally legal, death by lethal injection way.
At
least, if President Bush's call on Congress on the eve of the second
anniversary of September 11 to extend the death penalty is anything to go by.
It
began in June when Attorney-General John Ashcroft told lawmakers that the death
penalty needed to be expanded to cover "material supporters" of
terrorist organizations. On the surface it seems fair enough. If you give money
to al Qaeda then you have to expect a harsh penalty.
But
there's a catch. They've changed the definition of terrorist.
In
fact the Patriot
II Act redefines terrorism so vaguely and broadly it's not a great leap to
envisage the definition including political activists or just about anyone who
belongs to an organization that disagrees with the Administration.
Greenpeace
for example. It stands for non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global
environmental problems and their causes. While Greenpeace is adamant it does
not endorse sabotage it's really only a matter of definition, especially since
the organization has simulated sabotaging safety at nuclear facilities.
And
given that Bush specifically stated that the death penalty should be used in
certain cases of sabotage against military and nuclear facilities, it's not
difficult to see how Greenpeace could be ruled a terrorist organization,
transforming your membership into material support.
A
little extreme perhaps? Not if you consider the FBI
arrest of peaceful protesters exposing an illegal shipment of mahogany. Or
the dubbing of acts of vandalism
by the Earth Liberation Front (they spray-painted slogans such as
"greed and sloth" on SUVs) as domestic terrorism. Or the ability
under Patriot II to conduct all manner of surveillance without warrants;
authorize secret arrests, detentions, and grand jury subpoenas; create DNA
databases of those suspected of association with terrorism or terrorist groups;
and to enable the Government to remove citizenship from persons who belong to
or support disfavored political groups.
But
it’s not only your organization membership that brings you under the Patriot II
umbrella. Hiding behind that new broad catch-all phrase, domestic terrorism,
the act is shaping up to become a crime-fighting tool par excellence.
US
Justice Dept official Mark Corallo was reported in the New York Times as saying
they “have an obligation to do everything to protect the lives and liberties of
Americans from attack, whether
it's from terrorists or garden-variety criminals.”
And
there, right before your eyes, you see how far the ground has shifted. Under
Patriot II all other criminal legislation can be short-circuited, the laws and
standards of evidence lowered, the usual legal checks and balances of a
democratic society superseded. And instead of a judiciary-led legal system you
begin to understand it's the FBI that is in charge, with a Government agenda.
Under
imminent terrorist attack those shortcuts make perfect sense, but when used
against local drug dealers, car thieves, internet fraudsters et al, they begin
to look suspiciously like the early tentacles of a totalitarian society.
Section
127 of Patriot
II allows the Federal Government to supersede all local statutes governing
autopsies. So imagine yourself caught up in an investigation following, say,
your attendance at an anti-war rally. Remember, under this act you can't call a
lawyer or even a family member. Essentially, once you've slipped into the wide
cracks of the over-broad definition of a terrorist, you have no rights at all.
And
if perhaps you died while under interrogation, the autopsy results could show a
suicide or some other finding favorable to the Government.
Perhaps
this all sounds far-fetched. Especially, if, like me, you were bought up with
the golden rule: if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to worry about. But
when your Greenpeace bumper sticker, or your church attendance or the size of
your family become red flags that can trigger the opening of an FBI file in
your name, you know things have changed.
And
it's the little things that signal that change. Like the growing sense that
it's not wise to express your concerns openly. Or when you pick up any suburban
US newspaper and discover the two defining characteristics: the dearth of
international coverage and the voluminous column space given to crime, all of
it ugly, all of it adding to the climate of fear that increasingly pervades the
country. In that masterfully created environment, US Justice Department
official Corallo's comments sound not only imminently sensible, they sound like
a lifesaver.
Unless
of course you really do have something to hide; like your Greenpeace
membership, your internet browsing and perhaps that book on activism you bought
from Canada. That could just about be enough to get you killed. Only in
America. Oh, and North Korea and Communist China and Stalinist Russia and
Zimbabwe and Iraq, pre and post Saddam.
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn is a freelance writer who commutes between Montreal, Quebec and
The Hawkes Bay in New Zealand. She writes a weekly column for the New Zealand
Herald (www.nzherald.co.nz), and has contributed
to a wide range of media. She can be reached at: barb@sumnerburstyn.com. Visit her
website to read more of her work: http://www.sumnerburstyn.com/.
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