The National Security State vs. Freedom of Speech -- Rounds 1 and 2

I’m no fan of the Patriot Act, but there is one small section of it that even I assumed would be non-controversial; the prohibition of material support for terrorism.  Of course this does raise the question of how our enemies’ acts of violence tend to get labeled as terrorism, while similar acts of violence by our government and its allies never seem to earn that label.  But, leaving that aside for the moment, it’s fair to say that most of us would probably share some general common-sense assumptions about the kinds of goods and services that might constitute material support for terrorism. That list might include things like providing weapons, explosives, money, training, or logistical help to a terrorist group. 

Most of us will probably be surprised to learn that our government’s own interpretation of “material support” is far less intuitive, and, in fact, goes way beyond these things to include non-violent political speech by U. S. Citizens.  This was the crux of the government’s case in its 2010 prosecution of the Humanitarian Law Project, a U.S. non-profit organization that works to promote human rights around the world.  The Law Project worked with a Kurdish group that had been engaged in a decades-long violent conflict with Turkey, a key U.S. ally.  This Kurdish group was included on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

(A side note about the designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations:  this list tends to be made up of official enemies and typically excludes equally-violent groups and governments who are partners or allies of the U.S.   Once the State Department designates a group as an FTO, there is no way for the group to challenge or appeal that designation.  It is a highly-political, and highly-subjective designation, and one that obviously carries extremely serious consequences.)

So the Humanitarian Law Project was working with a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization – which, admittedly, sounds pretty bad on its face.   A closer look at the nature of that work, however, reveals that the Law Project was actually teaching the Kurdish group non-violent methods of addressing their grievances under Turkish and international law – essentially showing them a pathway out of armed struggle and into the peaceful political arena.

Still, the U.S. government maintained that this work amounted to material support for a terrorist organization and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the government in June of 2010.   The thing to remember about this ruling is that there were no accusations of arms shipments, or training in explosives, or financing by the Humanitarian Law Project that would have helped the Kurdish group carry out violent acts.  Our government’s case hinged on the idea that non-violent speech, when coordinated with a designated Terrorist group, amounts to material support.  The Supreme Court went further, and justified the denial of first amendment rights based on the mere concern that this non-violent political speech might somehow help to legitimize a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.  This is where the real danger lies.

Now that this door has been opened, it’s hard to see any clear limits—if there are any—on the government’s ability to criminalize dissent merely by claiming that dissent could possibly –even inadvertently—help legitimize an official enemy.  It’s not hard to imagine where this is likely to lead.

Like many others of my generation, I first became politically aware in the 1980s, during the surge of activism that swept through American college campuses in opposition to the Apartheid system in South Africa. If this law—or the government’s particular interpretation of this law—had been in effect 25 years ago, myself and tens of thousands of other Americans who participated in the Anti-Apartheid movement could have been subject to prosecution for material support of terrorism (it’s easy to forget that Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was also designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization at that time).   Also liable for prosecution would be former President Jimmy Carter, due to his efforts to foster peace processes in different parts of the world, which has necessarily involved his communication with the different parties to those conflicts.

It shouldn’t be surprising that, once the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the prosecution of the Humanitarian Law Project, the government immediately turned around and started to use the same law against elements of the U.S. anti-war movement.   In September of 2010, three months after the Supreme Court ruling, federal agents carried out a series of seven coordinated raids on the homes of activists in Minneapolis and Chicago.   They confiscated computers, cell phones, and loads of documents (political and personal), along with books and artwork – even seizing a poetry journal from an activist’s teenage child.

It was at this point that the government revealed that a Grand Jury had been convened in Chicago for the purpose of investigating whether these activists or their associates were guilty of violating the material support law.

(A side note about Grand Juries: they meet in secret, considering evidence provided by a government prosecutor.  People targeted by these investigations don’t have the opportunity to see or respond to this evidence.  Those targeted by these investigations are also required to appear before the prosecutor and Grand Jury without an attorney to represent them.  The government can also decide to unilaterally “grant” a form of immunity that eclipses a person’s right to remain silent, which means they can be jailed for contempt if they refuse to answer the prosecutor’s questions.)

At the time of the September raids, FBI agents issued subpoenas ordering 14 activists to appear before the Grand Jury.   By Christmas, the number of subpoena’d activists grew to 23.  All of these people may end up being forced to make a choice between answering questions about their own political beliefs and activities, or the beliefs and activities of their friends and family members (who could then be drawn into the investigation) or face being jailed for refusing to speak.

And exactly who are these activists on whom the government is so keen to spend tax dollars investigating?   They are a mix of young and older people – many are parents with families of their own.  About half of them are active members or leaders within their Unions.  Several of them are teachers.  They have been involved in community organizing around police brutality, the rights of poor people and immigrants, and in opposition to U.S. wars in Latin America and the Middle East for many years.  A number of them played key roles in organizing large, high-profile protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention.  Each one of them is passionate about peace and justice, and they all have deep roots in their communities.  None of them have done anything significantly different from what thousands of other activists around the country have been doing.  So the short answer is; they’re not exactly Al Queda.

We don’t have to agree with their specific views, but we all have a responsibility to defend their right to express those views peacefully.  If you would like to find out about ways to support these activists or learn more about this situation, you’ll find the Committee to Stop FBI Repression website useful.

Here 
and here are two useful articles about the September raids:

Over 225 Unions and Community groups have passed resolutions or issued statements of supports for these activists. Here is one from a coalition of Chicago-are faith-based organizations.

And finally, I recommend reading the Supreme Court’s Holder Vs. Humanitarian Law Project decision – especially the dissent by Justice Breyer.

(Cross-posted at Bark, Bugs, Leaves & Lizards.)

Yes Virginia, There Is A Class War

(Pre-post disclaimer: For selfish reasons, I'm posting this without any links.  None of the figures I mention are in dispute, and they're easily-accessible on the inter-webs.)

I had originally intended to continue posting on events in Wisconsin as they blew up in February, but I found myself repeatedly overtaken by events -- and by events, I mostly mean the assault on what’s left of the American labor movement that has now spread to many other states, including here in Illinois.
And, for the record, calling this an assault on what’s left of the labor movement is, unfortunately, dead on.

It isn’t news that the American labor movement is in serious decline.  Back in 1945, 36% of all American workers belonged to Unions; this included 33.9% of private sector employees, and 9.8% of public sector employees.  Fast forward to 2011, and less than 12% of American workers are Union members.  Additionally, the composition of that total has flip-flopped from what it once was; now including 36.2% of public sector employees and just 6.9% of private sector employees.  At this point the NEA and the AFT – the two largest Unions representing teachers and education employees – together account for more than one quarter of all Union members in the United States.

The logic implicit in these numbers is not lost on our enemies: If you want to weaken or destroy what’s left of the American Labor movement, you have to attack the public sector Unions. And to effectively go after the organized public sector you have to target the two teachers’ Unions.  As I explained to a group of suburban teachers and school support staff leaders last week, this puts a huge target on their backs.  It also helps explain why attempts to vilify teachers seem to be so prevalent in the corporate media, as well as why school reform – at least as it’s conceived of in polite society – has an explicitly anti-teacher and anti-Union character.

So, in the spirit of those “You Are Here” spots that you find on maps in shopping malls, I offered my group of school employees this snapshot: The decline of the labor movement over the last 40 years has coincided with increasing levels of wealth and income inequality (which had actually been decreasing until the 1970’s, but now—by our own government’s calculations—have risen to actually make us “less equal” of a society than countries like Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt).   98.5% of all key investments are in the hands of the top 10% of our population (the richest 1% actually own more than half the shares traded on Wall Street), while the face of home ownership – typically the biggest investment of working and middle class families – is being permanently altered by a record-high and still-increasing foreclosure rate, and millions more people are falling behind on mortgages that outweigh the value of their houses.   Benchmarks of our economic growth have been decoupled from median income, so that the President can trumpet an economic recovery against a backdrop of near-record unemployment that touches almost every family, and an official poverty rate that now encompasses one in six Americans.

Through all of this, the growing influence of our corporate and financial sectors has allowed them to effectively partner with a willing government to write their own regulations.  Massive taxpayer-funded bailouts have socialized losses while keeping profits in private hands, and corporations now feel confident enough to turn their attention to areas like Social Security and education.  Cuts to public budgets at the Federal, State, and local levels combined with tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals amount to an upward-transfer of wealth of historic proportions.

And then, in January of 2010, came the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the 5-4 ruling that overturned years of precedent and effectively opened the floodgates for corporate spending in our electoral campaigns.   The effects were obvious almost immediately, as an unprecedented volume of corporate dollars began pouring into the mid-term election.

As I asked my group of teachers and support staff leaders: What should we logically expect from a newly-elected crop of Governors and legislators whose campaigns were funded by corporations?    The answer—an astonishing assault on public employees (i.e. what’s left of the labor movement) at the state-level:   Collective bargaining rights are currently under assault in 18 states.  The diminution or elimination of pensions is threatened in 28 states.   13 states are considering implementing or strengthening existing “right to work” laws.  “Merit pay” for teachers is being considered in 9 states.  17 states are threatening to outlaw payroll deduction of union dues.  24 states are considering new school voucher measures.  Additionally,  seniority, teacher tenure and evaluations, and health care benefits are being targeted in a number of states.

These coordinated assaults are the logical outcome of this unprecedented increase in corporate money and influence in our political system; that’s the bad news.   The really bad news is that what we are seeing is only the beginning, and it’s almost certainly going to get much, much worse.

And the question of how to fix this is no longer as simple as we once might have assumed. While most of us have probably taken the idea of life in a liberal democracy for granted, the reality is that the game is now significantly rigged in a way that it hasn’t been before.  This raises a chilling question – one that is as uncomfortable to articulate privately as it is unlikely to be raised by the official punditry on television news shows: once loosed, can this corporate genie be put back in the bottle?

The task of relying on traditional electoral involvement to try to identify and vote-in “good politicians” to push back this corporate tsunami is at the very least daunting, and at some point—if we haven’t already—we are bound to reach a tipping point where the corporate grip on our electoral system is so strong that efforts to reclaim it through traditional means may no longer be viable.  (How do you tell your Civics class that we may be moving into a period of U.S. history in which the ballot box may go the way of the Model T, and where efforts to make meaningful change must take place outside of the electoral system?)

But there’s good news too; bolstered by powerful examples of solidarity and civil disobedience in Tunisia and Egypt, direct action has been a vital component of the battles in Wisconsin and many other states.  And as much as teachers and other education employees have been targeted in these assaults, they have also been in the forefront of the resistance to them – partly because they are being targeted, and partly because, although they tend not to think of themselves this way, on a certain level they are seen as leaders within their communities.  With that role comes a voice, an ability-, and a responsibility to fight back.

The key role of educators was apparent again over the weekend as British Unions brought together half a million people – the second largest rally ever to take place in London – to protest against that country’s public sector cuts and corporate tax breaks.  And we really don’t need to look beyond our own history – to the struggles to end slavery, for Civil Rights, against imperialist wars, as well as the fierce battles that were necessary to create our labor movement in the first place – to find examples of how our predecessors fought to make change outside of traditional electoral routes.

It may be true that the events of any given period will always create some kind of ripple effects for future generations, but the scope and intensity of the assaults now taking place in our lifetimes will certainly shape the world of our children and grandchildren.  Unless we are willing to doom them through our own inaction, we can’t allow ourselves to feel too far removed, or too cynical, or too cool.   It’s time to put on a pair of comfortable shoes and hit the streets!

In The End There Can Be Only One

Displaced Aggression -- Final League Report

A hush fell over the northwest suburbs on Sunday, as Dingobros and the Turduckens faced eachother in our Championship matchup.  The ensuing action was less-than-pretty, but the outcome was not unexpected; It seems that, at least this time, the ESPN geeks got it right.  The Dingos, after an oedipal elimination of their own father’s team in round 2, ended up posting their fourth-lowest score of the entire season – which was sad, but still enough to derail the hapless Turduckens, whose own dreams of glory were pinned on the unlikely prospect of Steven Jackson cranking out 34 points in Sunday night’s game.  In the end he came up with 11, and the Dingobros held on to Our Beloved League’s virtual trophy for a second straight year.  Anyone smell a dynasty?

Surprisingly, hot and heavy action continued outside of the Championship bracket, with six of our teams continuing to add and drop players through all three rounds of post-season consolation-play.  N.O. Brass upped the number of Saints on its starting lineup to 6 in hopes of rekindling some mid-season mojo, but were nonetheless trounced by the Salukis in round 3.  The Duestakers and HellFire Club appeared to have lapsed into auto-pilot, losing to Gonk’s Revenge and Dayment respectively, and Mental Garbage beat the tar out of the Pulled Hammies, who led the auto-pilot/zombie pack all season.

Token Female and the Lakeviewers continued the pointless slugfest that we all hope is not a reflection of their real-life marriage, and the 4-10 Blue Devils unexpectedly and ironically rode up the consolation ladder on a three-game winning streak, leaving the Wackers to finish the season the same way they started it; as our League’s Fredo Corleone.

We’ll have to leave it to historians to tease out whatever greater meaning might be found in our 2010 season.  In the face of the Dingobros’ iron grip on the throat of victory, we band of merry losers are now left to lick our wounds and reflect on the sobering fact that a middle-schooler has now kicked our butts for two years in a row.  For our part, we laughed, we cried, experienced fleeting triumph and burning humiliation, and no matter what else they say about us, they’ll have to admit that we all took hard shots and came back for more – like Brett Favre, but without the sexting.

Thanks to all of you for another bang-up season, and congratulations to Dingobros, two-time holder of our League’s pimp-goblet of a virtual trophy. Until next season – Ojo Del Tigre!

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

And Then There Were Four

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Playoff Week 1

Round 1 saw our little corner of the world turned topsy-turvy, as the three top-seeded teams and a former champion/perennial spoiler were pitilessly eradicated by an assortment of malicious Cinderellas.  In the end, grief counselors had to be bused in, and our League’s brightest and best were reduced to pointing out exactly where on the doll their opponents had touched them.  
Sunday’s violence had the sudden and unexpected feel of a penitentiary-shanking: The Dingobros literally clawed their way into the playoff bracket and ate the baby of a stunned first place Hellfire Club, and the Salukis squeaked out a 4-point win that put a brutal and definitive end to Gonk’s Revenge.
In the two playoff matchups that remained unsettled until Monday, both the Duestakers and the Turduckens hoped to make up 9-point deficits in the Bears-Vikings game. The Duestakers bet their paycheck on Adrian Peterson‘s knee and lost, granting a reprieve to a thankful N.O. Brass, while the Turduckens, high on 26 points courtesy of the Bears Defense, stepped deftly around the battered remains of Team Dayment and breathed their own sigh of relief.
Several other matchups took place in the unfortunately–named Consolation Ladder – across the tracks on the seedy side of the League – where, in terms of raw enjoyment, the proceedings are typically on par with a time-share seminar or a gathering of Greek Orthodox widows.  The dismal reality of life in this reverse-image of the playoff bracket was summed up on these very pages back in 2008 (note this year’s coincidental Round 1 re-matching of the four teams mentioned):

It’s not as easy to muster excitement about what passes for Round 1 action in our League’s hobo-camp of a consolation ladder; a virtual Island of Misfit Toys where the losers are left behind to scrounge up whatever comfort they can from cheap liquor and the flaming debris of their tragic seasons.  Here we find the accursed Wackers lining up to pummel Mental Garbage for a second week in a row, while Dayment and the Turduckens square off against each other like winos armed with broken bottles.  What is the point, you may ask?  It has something to do with the Loser’s Code, something that’s not easily understood on the sunny side of the street.  It boils down to simply not wanting to be the worst of the worst.  These ragged clubs may stink like Satan’s butt-rag, but they’ve still got enough heart to go down fighting like Chupacabras.

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

Skundered!

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 10

An Irish friend once shared the story of a neighbor who went to a pub to see a girl he was seriously smitten with.  He downed pint after pint to steady his nerves as he waited for her to arrive, and when she finally did, he barfed all over himself while trying to ask her out.  As my friend sadly put it, the young man was skundered. 

It’s hard to think of a better term for what happened to the Turduckens in Week 10, as they were viciously deposed from their newly-assumed 1^st place-perch by the Dingobros, a lower-middle tier sleeper with a taste for blood and the derailed aspirations of haughty opponents. This wasn’t the only dramatic upset to rain down on Our Beloved League in Week 10: Dark horse HellFire Club stomped the Duestakers like a female protester at a Rand Paul campaign appearance, but the Duestakers somehow managed to cling to 2^nd place.  And, perhaps most astonishingly, the last-place Lakeviewers FUBAR’d the once-mighty Salukis, who tumbled to 6^th place in near-complete disgrace.  

Some insiders refuse to buy into the drama surrounding these upsets, pointing out that it all boils down to a bit of shuffling around; Week 9’s top six teams are still Week 10’s top six teams, they say.  There is no question, however, that the week’s biggest winners were the aforementioned HFC, who jumped from 5th to 3^rd place in the blink of an eye, and Gonk’s Revenge, who, with the relentlessness of a Terminator, completed their seemingly-inevitable climb to 1^st place by beating the tar out of the N.O. Brass—an outfit fatally compromised by bye-week holes and impaired-judgment, reportedly due to mixing box-wine with over-the-counter cold medicine.

In other action, Token Female was eighty-sixed by a roid-raging Mental Garbage, while the Wackers scored a freebie-win by virtue of their matchup with the Pulled Hammies, our League’s answer to passing GO in Monopoly. And finally, facing off against the ascendant Dayment, the Blue Devils pulled yet another colossally-flawed offensive scheme out of their toxic catbox of a strategic repertoire, with predictably-tragic results.

We all have to remain on guard against losing focus, with the playoffs a mere four weeks away.  A lot can happen in that amount of time, given our current 5-team 7-3 cluster tailed closely by another 3 who are only a game or two behind them.  The only thing we can be sure of is that dreams will be shattered and lamentations sung by the unlucky six whose seasons end short of the playoffs.  That bracket’s gilded gates will surely slam shut, locking them in the mausoleum-like gloom of our consolation ladder, where their eyes may eventually adjust to the darkness, but their hearts never will.

More Fun Than Rectal Bleeding

Displaced Aggression League Report -- Week 8

There’s not much to say about what happened in Our Beloved League in week 8.    Overall, it was the kind of scene that just leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable, like interpretive prayer-dance, or watching Glen Beck go on an extended crying jag.  

Most of us chalk it up to what old-timers call the Bye-Week Blues.  For the unlucky among us this translated into low scoring of the sinkhole-variety, as we watched our second- and third-string starters stumble around on the field like they’d been smoking ditchweed.  But one or two matchups were still worth a look-see.

All eyes were on the newly-crowned Duestakers as their fall from 1^st place-grace came at the hands of a bitter Gonk’s Revenge, who back-daggered the Duestakers as if they were a bastard-pretender to the League’s throne.  Proverbs teaches us that pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall, or something along those lines. The point is, a mere taste of hubris proved devastating to the 6-1 Duestakers, who now have one more bell that they’d like to unring.  And while you have to give credit where it’s due, ESPN’s projection of the Duestakers as the underdog in this matchup looks a little less impressive when you consider the fact that Revenge scored 185 more points than the Duestakers in the first seven weeks of the season.

Among the other scores that were settled on Monday night, the Blue Devils managed to expand and nail down their slight-lead over DingoBros, while Token Female dragged the Wackers back into the pit from whence they crawled, and 10^th place Mental Garbage managed to eke out a breathtakingly-humiliating 1-point win over 4^th place N.O. Brass, whose owner was reportedly so despondent that he holed-up in his attic with a laptop and a 12-pack of Meister Brau.

Elsewhere, in an act of sudden, arbitrary brutality rarely seen outside of correctional institutions, 7^th place HellFire Club gave 5^th place Dayment the kind of horrendous whooping that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a Mormon picnic.  The 2^nd place Salukis inflicted similar damage on the 13^th place Hammies, in a win that called to mind playground bullying and left most observers shaking their heads.  The 3^rd place Turduckens provoked the same reaction when they callously phoned in a cheap victory over last-place Lakeviewers.

In the end, Week 8 brings us past our regular season’s halfway point, and is as suitable a vantage point as any from which to reflect on what, if anything, all of this means.  For most of us it’s simple: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being something cool like Shark Week or a winning PowerBall ticket, and 1 being, let’s say, rectal bleeding, the 2010 fantasy football season would fall somewhere right in the middle, along with oatmeal and folk dancing. 

Respectfully Submitted,
Commissioner Tom

Lamentations of a Halloween Nerd

I know I’m at risk of reading too much into something that matters disproportionately to me, but I’ve been troubled by what appeared to be a significant drop in house and yard decorating in my community this Halloween.   In terms of outdoor decor, my town has always been more Christmas-oriented, but in past years you could always find at least a few houses on every block that put up orange lights, or a scarecrow, or a jack-o-lantern, or something.  But this year was different; you could drive from neighborhood to neighborhood on the big weekend and see nothing but darkness.

I tried to take comfort in the fact that the Midwest was buffeted by several consecutive days of near-record high winds last week; it’s possible that many people either took their decorations down, or decided not to decorate at all, because of the wind.  But the lady who cut my hair today offered a simpler and darker explanation.  She was talking about how the economy was affecting people; that more than one man cried in her chair while describing this impact on their families and lives. Her theory is that people are just depressed; they’re having a hard time getting in the holiday spirit at a time like this.  That’s a sad explanation, but it makes more sense than the wind. And it makes me wonder what Christmas is going to look like in my community this year.

As for me, Halloween is an obsessive calling.  I’ll keep lighting up my little corner of the world until the kids stop coming or until, in some bleak future, religious extremists are finally able to outlaw Halloween along with homosexuality and immigration. I can’t help thinking that—especially in times like these—the world needs haunting.

2010 Haunt-inventory (outside items):

Giant Spiderweb for garage

Giant Spider (the right eye needs to be re-wired)

Jack-o-lantern covers for the garage lights

Light up Happy Halloween sign for garage

Light up witch sign for garage (shorted out)

Wooden Zombie Danger Level sign

Zombie torso and head to go with sign

Light-up skull and hands (2 sets)

6 ft. cardboard coffin

Orange LED lights for bushes on side of house

Purple LED lights for bushes in front of house

Pumpkin lights for bush by driveway

Cornstalks wrapped in orange LED lights by driveway

7 pumpkins (only had time to carve four)

Baby-skeleton hung in wire fish-trap cage

Small ghost on a wire in front of house

Ring of five ghosts dancing around front tree

Large 2D skull lights for front tree (2)

Assorted disposable spider webs in bushes (6 or 7)

Zombie groundbreaker with moving head (broken by middle-schoolers)

Skeleton groundbreakers (2)

Foam tombstones (7)

Small seasonal signs on stakes (5)

Small zombie warning signs (4)

Witch figure with lighted, smoking cauldron

Fog machine for cauldron

Large werewolf figure with moving head

Large dog-cage for werewolf

Large witch-queen figure with lighted eyes

Throne for witch-queen

Large strobe-lit monster cage for living room window

Monster figure for cage

Skull lights and skull mini-border fence

40 foot wooden cemetery fence

Skull-topped gate-posts with lighted eyes (2)