-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 168 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Quebec City Crackdown --Racist right attempts infiltration of FTAA protests --Face it ....They're watching you --Ashcroft May Teach Lefties to Love Guns --Lefties Embrace Guns at Risk of Political Suicide =================================================================== Quebec City Crackdown <http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10510> Darryl Leroux, AlterNet February 20, 2001 From April 20-22, Quebec City has the dubious honour of hosting the 3rd Summit of the Americas. The Summit will bring together 34 heads of state -- every head of state in the Americas except Fidel Castro. And despite stringent security measures, including the largest police deployment in Canadian history, a tremendous contingency of anti-globalization protesters will be there to shake up the process. Aside from the Summit's usual declarations on security and terrorism, human rights and democracy, the main focus of this year's meeting will be to finalize the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement. According to Pierre Pettigrew, Canada's Trade Minister, "The FTAA is inextricably linked to the Summit of the Americas process." This agreement, which by its very nature will affect the everyday lives of millions, extends the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the entire Western hemisphere. It has been the subject of secretive negotiations since the first Summit was held in Miami in 1994. Negotiators have set 2005 as the FTAA's implementation deadline. Like NAFTA, the FTAA will submit health, education, environmental and labor standards to the forces of the free market. There are numerous illustrations of how such free trade agreements work in favor of corporations and against governments and individuals. Take the case of Metalclad Corp., a Texas-based toxic waste-disposal company, which accused the Mexican government of violating Chapter 11 of NAFTA. The Mexican state of San Luis Potosi had refused to allow Metalclad to re-open a waste-disposal site that was contaminating the local water supply. In response, Metalclad sought $90 million in compensation. In August 2000, a NAFTA Tribunal ruled in favor of Metalclad, ordering the Mexican government to pay $16.7 million in compensation. Meanwhile, workers have filed more than 20 labor complaints under NAFTA's labor side agreement, almost all of them against the Mexican government (since NAFTA does not allow complaints to be brought against corporations). In almost every case, fundamental violations of labor law have been proven, yet nothing concrete has been done to redress the workers' complaints. Incidents like the recent police violence of January 2000 against striking workers at Mexico's Kuk-Dong garment factory (whose biggest customer is Nike) and the Duro Bag factory (whose biggest customer is Hallmark) point out the impotence of the labor agreements. As Martha Ojeda, the director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, says, "We already know that its [NAFTA's] protections for labor rights are worthless." Since the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, there has been a growing awareness of neo-liberalism's failure to protect citizens' rights. To the wide coalition of protesters that will decend on Quebec in April, the FTAA represents another push of that same neo-liberal agenda. Not surprisingly, Canadian authorities are well aware of the potential PR disaster the Summit could become -- and they are doing everything they can to silence the dissenting voices in Quebec. Security measures being planned for the Summit are sweeping -- the largest police deployment in Canadian history. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) estimates that the overall budget for the police operation during the three-day Summit will be well over $22 million. Over 5,000 officers from the RCMP, provincial Surete du Quebec and local municipal forces are slated to work during the three days, while the Surete du Quebec assures people on its web site that if need be it will "co-ordinate and establish the necessary liaisons with the Canadian Armed Forces." Apparently, the need has arisen, as the Armed Forces have already been called in -- they are currently training 800 riot police just outside of Quebec City. Police officials have declared that they will establish a security perimeter in downtown Quebec, around the Vieux-Quebec and the Haute-Ville, two areas where the Summit will take place in April. They plan on erecting a 2.4 mile long metal fence, similar to those found around prisons, in the streets of the provincial capital sometime in early spring. The perimeter will cover approximately 4 square miles of the downtown core. Moreover, all citizens who reside or work in the security perimeter -- nearly 25,000 people -- are currently being given a security pass to enter the area, as will over 5,000 official delegates and nearly 3,000 accredited media. The original police plan to run criminal record checks on all Quebec residents receiving a pass was quickly shelved in the face of widespread public outrage. At a November press conference to announce more details on the planned security measures, Serge Menard, Quebec's minister for Public Security, surprised many by explaining that the Orsainville provincial prison will be emptied of its over 600 inmates during the Summit to make room for arrested protesters. He later went on to justify the need for such drastic police measures by saying, "If you want peace, you must prepare for war." This thinly veiled attempt to intimidate residents of Quebec City falls in line with the RCMP's portrayal of the Summit as "an eventual crisis situation," thereby justifying all police actions. The RCMP recently announced that it has rented all vacant apartments and houses within the security perimeter, as well as reserved all hotel accommodations within 55 miles, to avoid leaving anything vacant for trouble-makers. In an ironic twist on the notion of "free markets," the RCMP even forced several NGOs that had reserved hotel accomodations and conference rooms up to a year in advance out of their reservations, thereby assuring their space monopoly. They will reportedly go so far as to seal all sewer entrances within the security perimeter for fear of protesters finding their way through the underground maze and onto the laps of government officials and business executives. In a late January border incident, Canadian officials extended their suppressive policies to a group of U.S. citizens. Ten New York City-based individuals trying to attend a strategy meeting organized by the Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA in French) were denied entry into the country. Canadian officials proceeded to search the van, collecting and copying all documents pertaining to the mobilization against the Summit. As the activists were leaving, one Canadian official added wryly, "It is my job to protect the Canadian economy." Within Quebec City, the paranoia surrounding Summit security is reaching a fevered pitch. On February 4th, two plainclothes officers arrested three youth on one of the main avenues downtown for, ironically, handing out pamphlets denouncing the Summit security's violation of civil rights. Once their story became public, both the police and Quebec City Mayor Jean-Paul L'Allier quickly apologized for the "mistake," by explaining that the officers had misunderstood a local bylaw. However, only days before, members of the largest Quebec-based coalition mobilizing against the Summit were confronted by officers for passing out the same pamphlet in a mall. In response to these police moves, la Ligue des droits et libertes du Quebec (the Rights and Liberties League of Quebec) urged police not to create the impression that protesting is illegal, as it is a basic right protected under Canadian law. Spokesperson Andre Paradis explained "that the necessity to establish a security perimeter shouldn't transform the provincial capital into a city under siege, where the fundamental rights of civil society to express itself cannot be exercised in public space." In spite of high-level police intimidation, a large and diverse coalition is still planning opposition to the Summit. The largest group is Operation Quebec Printemps 2001 (OQP 2001), a coalition that was formed in December 1999. OQP brings together over 30 regional organizations (as of mid-February) including unions, NGOs, campus groups, community organizations, and political parties, as well as individuals. Coalition members' concerns range from the FTAA's impacts on labor and the environment to the threats on civil liberties resulting from the Summit itself. Although the demands of coalition members vary greatly, the aim of OQP 2001 is to raise awareness about the FTAA and globalization, organize non-violent protest, and present viable alternatives to corporate globalization. A "People's Summit" is planned for April 17-22 that will bring together activists from across the hemisphere and feature workshops, conferences, teach-ins and demonstrations. Alternatives, a large Quebec-based NGO and member of the OQP coalition, has also leased a building just beyond the security perimeter that will serve as the "Alternative Media Center." The Center is now open to journalists and a Quebec City Indy Media website (www.quebec.indymedia.org) in French, Spanish, and English is now up and running. Another major group planning resistance to the Summit is the Montreal-based Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC). Formed in April 2000 to offer a radical, anti-capitalist critique of corporate globalization, CLAC recently helped form the Quebec City-based Summit of the Americas Welcoming Committee (CASA). CASA and CLAC are now planning a Carnival Against Capital, including events in Quebec City and Montreal throughout April 2001 and culminating in a Day of Action on Friday, April 20, in Quebec City. The Carnival will include workshops, teach-ins, concerts, conferences, cabarets, street theatre, protests, and direct action. CASA and CLAC are also planning a series of events in Quebec City, for activists to discuss strategy, build networks, and become familiar with the city. The first such meeting, at the end of January, saw over 350 activists from across the U.S. and Canada share ideas and strategies for April. Meanwhile, CLAC has an "FTAA Caravan" moving across the northeastern United States and Canada. The caravan has already visited dozens of communities, most recently in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, New Hampshire and Vermont. CASA and OQP 2001 are also working to provide lodging and food for out-of-towners coming to Quebec City for the Summit. The two groups, in collaboration with the People's Potato (a Quebec-based organic food provider), are working on establishing kitchens in Quebec City to provide low-cost meals for locals and out-of-towners alike. Since the RCMP has reserved a block of 11,000 hotel rooms for the Summit, the search for lodging space has been difficult. However, OQP 2001 is trying to rent halls and gymnasiums and, in conjunction with the CASA, has planned an "Adopt a Protester" program. The idea, as CLAC member Jaggi Singh explains, "is to have protesters sit down and eat with Quebec City residents to get the real story (not the corporate media's) out to residents of the city. That way, people will have a chance of understanding what's actually going on." ---- Darryl Leroux is a freelance journalist living in Peterborough, Ontario. =================================================================== FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 21, 2001 RACIST RIGHT ATTEMPTS TO INFILTRATE ANTI-FTAA COALITION On February 14, 2001, the FTAA-Alert Coalition received an email to their listserv from Joseph Quesnel, who claimed to represent a group at McGill University called RadicalWatch. In the email, Quesnel invited people "interested in a free speech populist democracy angle to this issue" to contact his group. WHO IS JOSEPH QUESNEL? While Joseph Quesnel is a student at McGill University, his group has no official standing, according to school officials. Moreover, his impassioned championing of "free speech" is highly suspect, given his associations with extremist racist elements and his attempts to silence McGill Anti-Racist Action (ARA). FREE SPEECH, FIRST NATIONS SOVEREIGNTY AND "RAHOWA" In the spring of 2000, Friends of the Lubicon held a protest rally in front of the Montréal offices of Daishowa, a logging conglomerate that has attempted to silence supporters of the Lubicon Cree with a lawsuit. McGill ARA sent out a call for supporters to attend the protest rally. Quesnel responded to this call by sending an email to McGill ARA members in which he condemned "special interest groups" and threatened ARA members with "rahowa." "Rahowa" is an acronym for "racial holy war." It is also the motto used by the World Church of the Creator, a U.S.-based racist terrorist groups whose members have been involved in drive-by shootings, multiple murders and other forms of racist violence in recent years. The inclusion of the term "rahowa" in the email was clearly designed to intimidate McGill ARA members into silence. McGill ARA members responded to this threat by directly confronting Quesnel on two occassions, making it clear to him that we will not be threatened into silence by Daishowa or by people like him. Quesnel apologized both times and promised to not attempt to intimidate or harass our members further. FREE SPEECH FOR FASCISTS? Quesnel's concerns for free speech seem to center mainly on the free speech of fascists and hate-mongers and do not appear to extend to anti-racist groups or organizations. In October 2000, someone using the name "Joseph Quesnel" and Quesnel's email address signed an on-line petition against proposed hate crimes legislation. This petition can be found on the website of the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE). The Canadian Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) describes CAFE as a "fringe right organization" devoted to defending "Holocaust deniers like Ernst Zundel, Jim Keegstra and Malcolm Ross." (SOURCE: "The Heritage Front Affair - Report to the Solicitor General of Canada", Security Intelligence Review Committee, December 9, 1994). SIRC also describes Paul Fromm, CAFE's director, as a man with a decades-long history of associating and supporting racist groups in Canada, and one of the three key leaders of the racist right in Canada during the 1980's (Ibid.). Fromm has spoken at Heritage Front rallies, a group currently led by CAFE's webmaster, Marc Lemire. ATTACKING ANTI-RACIST FREE SPEECH In the fall of 2000, Quesnel met with representatives of the McGill Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) to complain about their decision to grant permission to McGill ARA to set up an information table on-campus. During this meeting, Quesnel produced anti-ARA propaganda from the Heritage Front website in an attempt to depict ARA as a "violent terrorist" organization that had no right to distribute anti-racist literature on campus. Quesnel's charges were brought to the attention of McGill ARA representatives, who quickly informed both AUS and Students' Society (SSMU) representatives about the reality of the situation. Not satisfied, Quesnel contacted Lemire in an attempt to get "evidence" that would enable him to force McGill University to revoke McGill ARA's status as a student club. To date, Quesnel's attempts to silence McGill ARA have been unsuccessful. FASCISTS AND FREE TRADE We believe that the attempts of Quesnel and his cohorts to infiltrate the anti-globalization movement are further evidence of the racist right's desperate attempt to capitalize on the fastest-growing political movement in the world for their own gain. It is extremely dangerous for anti-globalization activists to allow space in their milieu for racists and fascists to organize and recruit from. To do so threatens the security and safety of activists and citizens and compromises the legitimacy of the movement as a whole. At the IMF/World Bank meeting in Prague last fall, European fascists attempted to exploit the efforts of anti-globalization activists by participating in the protests. The Prague demonstrators responded by driving the fascists out of the city before the demonstrations got underway. There is no room in the anti-globalization movement for alliances with racists and fascists. It is our hope that the anti-FTAA coalitions will realize this and take appropriate action against the likes of Joseph Quesnel and his "RadicalWatch" group. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: McGill Anti-Racist Action B-09 William Shatner Building 3480 MacTavish McGill University Montreal, Quebec Canada Tel. (514) 573-STOP email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ARA Canada website: www.antiracistaction.ca =================================================================== [See website for embedded links.] Face it ....They're watching you <http://www.sfbg.com/nessie/36.html> By nessie The Federal Bureau of Investigation-Central Intelligence Agency-TK Drug Enforcement Administration-TK Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms-TK National Security Agency constitute America's de facto gestapo. They would like nothing better than to have us believe they mainly spend their time and our money protecting warm fuzzy kittens from those heinous fiends at Bonsaikitten.com, keeping kids off drugs, and trying to convince those woolly headed do-gooders in Congress to let them look over our shoulders while we surf the Net so that bogey man extraordinaire Osama bin Laden doesn't slip one past them and kill a bunch of innocent Americans. They also like to look like they are keeping a lid on domestic ecosabotage and the depredations of militant animal-rights activists. Don't believe it. Oh sure, they do make an effort to protect us. We are, after all, relatively valuable livestock. But their primary role is to keep us in line. This cannot be done by brute force alone. There are simply too many of us, and we are too well armed. So instead they rely on information, informers, and information technology in order to stay one step ahead of us. So far, it's working. These people like nothing better than to keep track of our numbers, our locations, and activities. The virtual panopticon is closing in around us at an alarming rate. The renaming of its components and the concealment of its processes , fool only the most naive. It used to be that those of us who weren't criminals or political activists could expect to be able to conduct our lives without being subject to government surveillance. Those days are over. Now even sports fans are being subjected to treatment once reserved for criminal suspects. Fans who lined up to attend Super Bowl XXXV were, without their knowledge, standing in a virtual lineup. According to the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 1, 2001: Hidden cameras scanned each of their faces and compared the portraits with photos of terrorists and known criminals of every stripe. In a command post at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the digitized images of fans and workers were cross-checked against files of local police, the FBI and state agencies at the rate of a million images a minute. The cameras identified 19 people with criminal histories, none of them of a "significant" nature ... ... [Tampa police spokesman Joe] Durkin said the department wanted to screen for pickpockets and other potential scam artists drawn to the huge event and for potential terrorists who wanted to use its worldwide TV and radio audience to make a political statement ... No arrests were made that day. But, Durkin said, "it alerted us that they were there. It confirmed our suspicions that a crowd of this magnitude would attract people trying to take advantage of the situation." Typically for corporate news, this story is only partly true. Obviously, it wasn't cameras that compared the portraits. It was face-recognition software (FRS). The Times also neglects to question how the police confirmed their suspicions without making arrests. Can they read minds? Questioning the police, or authority in general, is not something the corporate media does well or often. If that's what you want, you'd better go to the anticorporate media instead. At Indymedia, the news about what was done to the fans at Super Bowl has sparked vigorous debate about how FRS can be deceived, or "spoofed" as it's called in the trade. Sports themselves have become the subject of long-overdue discussion. Long overdue as well, is recognition by the public of the threat that FRS, and artificial intelligence in general, presents to political activism. Though you'd never know it from the Times' account of Super Sunday, FRS is nothing new. Back in 1997, Science Daily reported: Computer "eyes" are now up to such tasks as watching for fugitives in airline terminals and other busy locations. A sophisticated face-recognition system that placed first in recent Army competitive trials has been given the added ability to pick out faces in noisy or chaotic "street" environments. The new Mugspot software module developed at the University of Southern California automatically analyzes video images, looking for passers-by. When it finds them, it picks out the heads in the images and then tracks the heads for as long as they remain in the camera's field ... "This face-recognition software, developed at USC and the University of Bochum, Germany, and now in commercial use for clients such as Germany's Deutsche Bank, is robust enough to make identifications from less-than-perfect face views. It can also often see through such impediments to identification as mustaches, beards, changed hair styles and glasses - even sunglasses." Take note of that date. As well as being a technology with many commercial applications, artificial-intelligence software such as FRS is of great use to the military and intelligence communities. It is not at all atypical for technology with military and intelligence applications to exist for 10, 20, even 30 or more years before reaching the commercial market (if at all). The entire dynamic of identity disguise at public demonstrations must be reevaluated in the light of FRS, and that reevaluation must be backdated considerably. The calculus has changed. Those of you who still wonder why political activists might want to conceal their identity need only to read history. Start with COINTELPRO. Even a cursory perusal will set you straight. As recently as last at year's political conventions, the arbitrary, preemptive arrests of those who the state sees as leaders of dissent illustrated the enormous threat to liberty that FRS represents when it is in the wrong hands. And make no mistake about it, it is in the wrong hands. FRS programs mimic the way that the human brain recognizes a face. They electronically analyze the distances between various parts, or landmarks, of the face. Every face has its own distinct pattern, so the information enables the programs to distinguish one individual from another. Facial landmarks are on distinctive structures, such as the eye sockets, the bridge of the nose or the cheekbones. Facelt, one of Mugspot's competitors, defines the face as having 60 landmarks. According to its developers, Facelt takes only 14 of these landmarks to reconstruct an individual's distinctive facial pattern. Since FRS software makes such effective use of bone structure, a ski mask or bandanna probably won't defeat it. If it can see through a beard and sunglasses, how much good do you think a rag over your face is going to do? A loose, rubber mask may spoof FRS, but don't bet your freedom, or even your life, on it. No one who takes an active role in organizing public dissent is safe from the withering gaze of techno-repression. Toss Echelon, Carnivore, Prosecutor's Management Information System (or PROMIS), and High-Definition TV into the mix, and it's a whole new world. Now days, anyone who does more with his political convictions than grumble into his beer is, of necessity, forced to consider his or her personal life to be an open book. People's opinions, appearance, and even location, is a matter of record. These records can be cross matched, sometimes with life-altering results. Modern information technology, especially artificial intelligence, has redefined forever the economics of surveillance. No longer is the tedious, expensive, and intrinsically subjective work of the human mind required. The days of three shifts a day, 24-7, trench coat-and-sunglasses-wearing teams working for scale are over. Today, even as innocuous an statement of one's objection to the tyranny of our rulers as kvetching over the Internet, is not too expensive to investigate. Artificial intelligence has made the cost of conducting surveillance virtually negligible. It has made truly effective mass covert surveillance a possibility for the first time in history. The powers that be not only admit to using covert surveillance on innocent citizens, they brag about it. They are justifiably proud of themselves. But that's not why they are bragging. They are bragging to send us a message. Covert mass surveillance has been a long-standing, front burner project since before we were born. SS chief Heinrich Himmler, for example, was a notoriously obsessive collector of records about minutia. He was supposedly asked once what possible value there could be in knowing that a "Private so-and-so did KP duty on such-and-such a night." He is said to have answered, "One never knows." Not only do our rulers now employ artificial intelligence to keep track of what we are doing, they have apparently begun using it to predict what we will do in the future. This is called behavioral-recognition software. If it's not already in use, it's in the pipeline. They seem to be trying to break this to us gently. Last April, we were permitted to learn that TASC, a subsidiary of defense giant Litton Industries, was joining with Loronix Information Systems to codevelop a state-of-the-art digital video technology that employs software to find behavioral patterns in video images. The proposed technology will allow retailers to catch shoplifters before they ever take an object, capture the image of people performing a fake "slip and fall" for an illegal lawsuit, and clean up a spill before an accident occurs. Law enforcement could use such intelligent video technology to spot erratic traffic patterns, such as cars moving at high speeds, irregular turning, or other atypical traffic behavior. By using intelligence extracted from the video, law enforcement officials could proactively manage problem spots by isolating trends before problems got out of hand. Highway officials, Loronix points out, could also monitor critical safety areas like railroad crossings more effectively. Imagine getting a ticket for an infraction you haven't even committed yet. It gets worse. They are now teaching computers to hunt in packs. According to EurekAlet, an NEC Institute-Penn State study shows that computer programs, known as autonomous agents, not only can evolve their own language and talk with one another, but also can use communication to improve their performance in solving the classic predator-prey problem. Like kids playing hide and seek, the autonomous agents used in the study hunted for and found their prey faster and more efficiently if they communicated with one another. Who, we must wonder, are these packs being taught to hunt? Because the technology does not simply "look" for an object or an individual, security teams at airports and casinos can use it to spot a person's irregular behavior. If it can detect suspicious behavior in an airport, it can detect suspicious behavior at a demonstration. What, exactly is "suspicious behavior" in the government's eyes, anyway? Here - as compiled by Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer David Cole in Insight - are reasons the DEA has actually given in court for targeting people: Arrived in the afternoon Was one of the first to deplane Was one of the last to deplane Deplaned in the middle Purchased ticket at the airport Made reservation on short notice Bought coach ticket Bought first-class ticket Used one-way ticket Carried no luggage Carried small bag Carried a medium-sized bag Carried two bulky garment bags Carried two heavy suitcases Carried four pieces of luggage Disassociated self from luggage Traveled alone Traveled with a companion Suspect was Hispanic Suspect was a black female Acted too nervous Acted too calm Walked quickly through the airport Walked slowly through the airport Walked aimlessly through the airport Imagine having your face recognized in a crowd, instantly cross matched by a computer program with a record of every time you have interfaced with the Internal Revenue Service; the Department of Motor Vehicles; and local, state, and federal law enforcement; with a profile of your political opinions as expressed over the Internet; with your current credit rating; with a list of your last six months of telephone traffic; with your home address; and with all the same information about your friends, family, and associates, and anybody else who came up in the search. Now imagine all that information being used to predict what you will do next. Imagine what happens if the program thinks that whatever it thinks you are going to do rates proactive intervention. Imagine being then subjected to a preemptive strike by the jack-booted thugs of the state. Now imagine what would happen if it wasn't your face that alarmed the software, but the face of someone who looked like you, only the software couldn't tell the difference. It could happen. Sooner or later, it will happen. It might sound like science fiction, but it's not. It's life in the world today. It's not even a secret. It's a brag. Welcome to the New World Order. =================================================================== Ashcroft May Teach Lefties to Love Guns <http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10466> Knute Berger, AlterNet February 13, 2001 I have never understood why the left in this country has decided to unilaterally disarm. Why is it that liberal civil libertarians are always gung ho on the constitution, until it gets to the Second Amendment which was what, written in invisible ink? In trying to stake out some kind of moral high ground, the left has abandoned not a only a basic right, but a potent symbol. Face it, in America, you only get respect if you're packing. The right has known this for a long time: guns are as American as John Wayne, as righteous as Charlton Heston, as cool as the latest, hipster noir revival film (Snatch comes to mind). But more importantly, the militias, patriots, NRA-nuts, and neo-Confederates comprise an important, and much pandered-to, Republican constituency. Their guns, and the money that goes with them, have gained them the attention of the media and the powerful. Unlike Barry Goldwater, their extremism in the defense of liberty has been good politics. Now one of the big panderers is Attorney General, John Ashcroft, a man who loves to toss around right-wing code words that mean something to the far political fringe. He defends gun rights as a bulwark against the "tyranny" of government and judicial activism, and he extols the virtues of "southern patriots." As the left faces the possible even likely, tyranny of a far-right Republican regime, isn't it time to lock and load? The left has been reluctant to ally itself with the right on many issues, even when they agree. Notice that few activists have embraced Pat Buchanan for his stance against the World Trade Organization. Partly it's principle, not wanting to associate with racists, anti-Semites, or religious fanatics. It's also partly snobbery, avoiding the trailer trash side of the cultural divide. The result is that many liberals looked the other way at the outrages at Ruby Ridge and Waco, or at the depradations against privacy and police restraint under Attorney General Janet Reno and Bill Clinton. They scoffed when the NRA fundraisers called federal cops "stormtroopers." Well, now that the government is in new hands, is the left having any second thoughts? Does anyone really believe that Ashcroft's ATF will be any more compassionate than Janet Reno's? It's not like lefty activists have abandoned violence entirely. The Earth Liberation Front and other so-called eco-terrorists are torching trophy homes that sprawl into the last lots of wilderness (or Long Island). The Black Bloc anarchists of Eugene and elsewhere are ever-eager to make a statement by smashing glass at the nearest Starbucks or Niketown. Of course, they don't like to call such acts violence because, they rationalize, acts against property aren't violence, because private property itself is violence. Whatever. The fact remains that some elements of the left are resorting to actions that make simple gun ownership for self-defense, or any other legal reason, seem downright lame. After all, target shooting, it seem to me, is much less violent than burning down a ski resort. If the mainstream left was honest with itself, it would end its pious moralizing about guns and recognize that violence is sometimes an effective political tool. An even greater tool is the threat of violence. In Seattle, a group of pro-gun progressives, Democrats for the Second Amendment, got together with a group called Cease Fear to offer NRA handgun training to gay and lesbians. The training was also sponsored by a variety of organizations, including the Microsoft Gun Club, the local Libertarian Party, and the Jewish Defense League. While Cease Fear focuses on basic gun safety training, it was also designed to help people get over the idea that guns are for rednecks only. Jonathan Rauch, in a Salon article called "Pink Pistols," argues that guns can not only protect gays, but empower them the way self-defense has empowered Jews. "Guns can do the same thing for homosexuals: emancipate them from their image, often internalized, of cringing weakness. Pink pistols, I'll warrant, would do far more for the self-esteem of the next generation of gay men and women than any number of hate crime laws or antidiscrimination statutes." Rauch wants to make gay-bashing dangerous. To that end, Cease Fear unveiled new T-shirts for last spring's Gay Pride parade: and delta symbol with a fist holding a handgun and the words "Bash this!" In that spirit, the time is ripe for liberals to overcome their Second-Amendment reluctance, embrace gun rights, praise Gaia and pass the ammunition. It's time to test the tolerance of the Bush administration's new chief law enforcement officer by seeing how far he'll go to protect those who also abhor tyranny, but from the opposite end of the political spectrum. It's time to say, "Hey Ashcroft, bash this!" =================================================================== Lefties Embrace Guns at Risk of Political Suicide <http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10511> Joel Streicker, AlterNet February 20, 2001 [This op ed is a response to Knute Berger's recent article, "Ashcroft May Teach Liberals to Love Guns."] Knute Berger calls on liberals to abandon our support for gun control and instead take up arms, literally, as a means of advancing a progressive political agenda. Mr. Berger's argument is based on dangerous misconceptions, and heeding his advice would be politically counterproductive. Mr. Berger castigates liberals for disarming. If he means that at some point most liberal or leftists were armed, he's clearly mistaken. If he means that we should arm ourselves to advance our political goals, Mr. Berger is guilty of an astonishing misreading of modern American history, it's as if he's learned nothing from the experiences of the Black Panthers or the anti-war movement. Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan in the first quarter of the 20th century is the clearest example of the successful use of armed force by a civilian group in pursuit of a political agenda and the Klan owed its success to government complicity rather than resistance to the state. It's not clear what Mr. Berger would have liberals do with our guns: would we have stormed the Senate to stop the Ashcroft confirmation dead in its tracks, so to speak? Will armed demonstrators persuade lawmakers to move left? Will we spend the next four years hooting over the latest Republican wimp jokes? (What do you call a conservative politician who has never been threatened by an armed liberal? Damned lucky.) Equally disturbing is Mr. Berger's inability to comprehend how the current lamentable state of the union's gun laws contributes to the oppressive state of the union. In many inner city communities, young African American and Latino men are, in fact, already armed. The result isn't a progressive politics energized by the threat of violence, but rather internecine slaughter, with the attendant human tragedy, fueling calls for the same failed tough-on-crime policies that have decimated communities of color, drained resources that could be used more productively, and provided conservatives with a stalking horse that they have ridden to power for decades. Mr. Berger argues that gays and lesbians can benefit more from embracing gun ownership than from legislative change. If the rest of the country is any guide, gays' and lesbians' guns more likely will be used to settle quarrels among friends violently, end domestic disputes with a note of finality, and turn a passing impulse into a permanent solution (the majority of all gun deaths are suicides), than to offing homophobic attackers. Mr. Berger suggests that American Jews' experience indicates that guns can work political magic for gays and lesbians because Jews have been "empowered" by self-defense. Armed Jews? In the US? That most liberal of liberal (read: unarmed) groups? On the contrary, Jews won enfranchisement through economic prosperity and communal organization, and the willingness to leverage them in the political arena not by the antics of fringe groups like the Jewish Defense League. Conservative gun culture harbors a deep suspicion of the rule of law. The NRA's leadership and the militias share the view that the Second Amendment safeguards the individual's right to rebel against tyrannical government. Leaving aside the legally well-settled fact that the Second Amendment does not refer to individual gun ownership, the framers of the Constitution clearly did not intend the Second Amendment to grant individuals license to rebel (the Constitution is clear on the framers' distaste for rebellion). Disputes over justice must be played out according to the rule of law, not the rule of violence. That's why gun control can't be abandoned to advance a liberal agenda: gun control is integral to any liberal agenda worthy of the name because it embodies the liberal principles of respect for the rule of law and the notion that government can and should be used for the common good as well as for the protection of civil liberties. Indeed, the main lesson to be learned from examining Mr. Berger's suggestions is that only peaceful political action, which includes civil disobedience, can bring desired change. It worked in the past, and there's no reason to believe that it can't work in the future, and every reason to believe that abandoning it for armed violence will bring nothing but repression and de-legitimization, setting back our work even more than the outcome of the recent election did. Embracing guns would be political suicide for the left. ---- Joel Streicker received a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Stanford University, and is currently is a policy analyst for a national gun control organization. His views do not necessarily represent those of his employer. =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. 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