From: Paul Kneisel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [pttp] The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tue, 2 October 2001 -- 5:79
(#604)
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The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 2 October 2001
Vol. 5, Number 79 (#604)
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Action Alerts:
01) New York City: Anti-War Rally -- 7 Oct 01
02) New York City: Teachers Against the War meeting -- 3 Oct
Village Voice Coverage of the Current Hysteria
04) Tom Robbins (Village Voice), "Working-Class Heroes: Towering Losses,
Towering Deeds," 26 Sep 01
05) Nat Hentoff (Village Voice), "The War on the Bill of Rights --
Coming: A National Wiretap Warrant," 26 Sep 01
06) Erik Baard (Village Voice), "The Dust May Never Settle: How
Dangerous Was That Dark Cloud Hanging Over Manhattan?," 26 Sep 01
07) Peter Noel (Village Voice), "Homeland Terrorism -- How Arabs and
Muslims Should Combat It -- Despite What the Jewish Defense
Organization Says," 26 Sep 01
08) Chisun Lee (Village Voice), "Equal Right to Fear: In Public Outrage
and Official Hunt, Some Face Special Terrors," 26 Sep 01
09) Sharon Lerner (Village Voice), "Slowing the Ashcroft Act: Haste
Could Lay Waste to Liberty," 26 Sep 01
10) Jennifer Gould (Village Voice), "The New Terrorism: How the Cold War
and Its Aftermath Fueled Islamic Militancy," 26 Sep 01
11) James Ridgeway (Village Voice), "John Ashcroft�s New America: The
Changed Lives of Arabs in the U.S. -- And What a Declaration of War
Would Really Mean," 26 Sep 01
12) Brendan I. Koerner (Village Voice), "Technology and Its Discontents:
Cyber-libertarians, Technologists, and Congress Wrangle Over
Electronic Privacy Issues During Wartime," 26 Sep 01
13) Cynthia Cotts (Village Voice), "The Return of Censorship: War Means
Never Having to Tell the Truth," 26 Sep 01
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ACTION ALERTS:
01) New York City: Anti-War Rally -- 7 Oct 01
7 Oct 01
"New York -- Not In Our Name" -- Our Grief is Not a Cry for War
Sunday, Oct 7, 3 PM March and Rally, Assemble at Union Square.
Interfaith Service: 2:30--3:00. Rally includes speakers, musicians,
actors, poets, religious leaders, relatives of WTC victims. Amy Goodman and
Rev Daniel Berrigan, hosts.
WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.
WE MOURN AND DEMONSTRATE WITH THE MISSION OF PREVENTING FURTHER HORRORS.
DENOUNCE ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY.
CREATE PEACE THROUGH ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE.
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02) New York City Teachers Against the War meeting
3 Oct
The 2nd citywide meeting of teachers, educators, youth workers and
students against the war will be held on Wednesday, October 3rd at 4:30-
6:30 p.m. at Hunter College, Thomas Hunter Hall, Room 202.
An proposed agenda will be posted to the listserve
[EMAIL PROTECTED] prior to the meeting.
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VILLAGE VOICE COVERAGE OF THE CURRENT HYSTERIA:
04) Working-Class Heroes: Towering Losses, Towering Deeds
Tom Robbins (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
Questions that linger: Were the hijackers peering through the cockpit
window as they swept toward their Lower Manhattan targets? In the final
instant before collision, was it possible for them to discern human faces
in the building ahead? Unlikely. Nor is it likely that they knew that the
representatives of the Great Satan they were about to crush were mostly
working stiffs, many of them union members.
New York still awaits a final census of the dead and missing from the World
Trade Center, but tallies so far indicate that most victims were people
whose only offense was getting to work on time.
Even at the large investment firms that registered the most staggering
losses, the casualties were members of a largely white-collar regiment:
computer technicians, data analysts, secretaries, systems engineers, and
commodities clerks, as well as brokers and traders.
At least 1000 of the victims belonged to labor unions. Among them were the
firefighters, city and Port Authority police, and emergency medical
technicians lost in the rescue efforts. Others were the kidnapped pilots
and flight attendants. Union members also worked throughout the towers. At
Windows on the World, the swank restaurant atop One World Trade Center, as
many as 79 members of Local 100 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant
Employees International Union perished. Twenty floors below them, at least
39 members of Public Employees Federation, most of them workers at the
Department of Taxation and Finance on the 86th and 87th floors of the south
tower, are missing.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2397.html>
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05) The War on the Bill of Rights -- Coming: A National Wiretap Warrant
Nat Hentoff (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
The rush to push aside the Bill of Rights began on September 13, two days
after the terrorist attacks. That night, the Senate swiftly attached to a
previously written appropriations bill an amendment to make it much easier
for the government to wiretap computers without having to go to court to
get multiple search warrants. The Internet has been enlisted against the
Evil Empire, and your privacy is the first casualty.
Passed by voice vote, with only brief debate, this incursion into the
Fourth Amendment was heralded by a sponsoring senator as "the first
legislative strike against terrorists."
In this immediate aftermath, Attorney General John Ashcroft has appeared
often on television to assure the public that to protect its security, the
government will demand new legislation for "roving wiretaps." Rather than
target a suspect's primary phone, the judicial warrant would extend the
wiretap to any and all telephones--regular, cell, or any other--that he or
she used. If the suspect talks on a relative's phone, or a phone in an
office unrelated to his alleged terrorist activities, or a phone in your
home, the owners of those phones would also become part of the
investigative record of purported terrorism.
The public was not told by Ashcroft that roving wiretaps had already become
law in 1998, during the Clinton administration. The Bush team wants credit
for this strike against Osama bin Laden. Only Georgia congressman Bob Barr,
a fierce conservative advocate of privacy, tried to stop the 1998 roving-
wiretaps law, and the press paid hardly any attention.
What is new is Ashcroft's pressing for a radical extension of present
government wiretapping powers. The law now says that a warrant for a
wiretap is valid only in the jurisdiction in which it is issued. But the
Bush administration demands a national wiretap warrant that will save its
agents from repeated trips to court.
The president and his enforcement team correctly anticipate that the public
will offer little opposition to the evisceration of its Fourth Amendment
rights--and other Bill of Rights "guarantees" of protection of individual
liberties against the government.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2398.html>
- - - - -
06) The Dust May Never Settle: How Dangerous Was That Dark Cloud Hanging
Over Manhattan?
Erik Baard (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
Long after the World Trade Center's pulverized remains are swept away, New
Yorkers may be plumbing the depths of the health and environmental damage
wrought by the attack. The pillars of smoke and dust that for days stood in
place of the twin towers carried fear through the air: almost immediately,
questions were raised about what might be riding the plume.
The Philadelphia Daily News showcased a photograph of the smoke in which
hysterical types claimed to see the face of Satan. More secular fears
ranged from anthrax to the common, and hazardous, asbestos.
And even if the dust falling into the harbor didn't damage aquatic life,
calls for better waterfront infrastructure to handle emergencies are
forcing environmentalists to reconsider their plans to revive much of our
waterways' fragile ecosystems. Though New York pulled off its version of
the Dunkirk evacuation after the attacks, the city was essentially caught
with its pants down on the waterfront. New pier restoration work, bulkhead
building, and long-opposed dredging may go ahead to guard against that in
the future.
During the week that followed the attack, the acrid smell of burning
plastic was so strong that residents far from ground zero mistakenly called
in false alarms to fire departments in Queens, Nassau County, Brooklyn, and
New Jersey.
Did the chemical smell hint at danger?
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2386.html>
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07) Homeland Terrorism -- How Arabs and Muslims Should Combat It -- Despite
What the Jewish Defense Organization Says
Peter Noel (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
I for one do not really think the "new war" will be fought overseas. . .
. I feel the real war is gonna be at home. We [hear] language about
"finding their supporters and their organization.". . . I fear that the
government is going to use this as a pretext�and I'm going to say the I
-word--to go after those groups and individuals who have stood up
against
the Israeli lobby in this country. They will use this as an opportunity
to empanel grand juries, to go after financial records, to do everything
they can to repay their friends in the Middle East. And we know who
their friends are. . . .
-- Radical attorney Stanley Cohen, speaking to Muslims in Passaic
County, September 22
This is the kind of Israel bashing that infuriates the Jewish Defense
Organization, a band of anti-Arab and anti-black extremists who once called
for the assassination of the Reverend Al Sharpton. But because it is
illegal for the JDO to openly sanction the murder of people like Cohen, it
has spewed the type of incendiary rhetoric that could get him killed in the
wake of the outrage over the terrorist attack on America.
Last week, after the Voice first reported that Cohen might defend Saudi
Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden--if he is captured and brought to justice
for the massacre at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--the JDO left a
threatening outgoing message about Cohen on the group's answering machine.
Although the message stops short of calling on supporters to exact
"infinite justice"--what the Bush administration has promised to deliver to
the terrorists it suspects are behind the suicide bombings--it makes plain
the fate the JDO wishes would befall Cohen.
This is what callers will hear on the two-minute-long recording:
A vicious bombing by Arab and Muslim terrorists against America, the
same Arab and Muslim terrorists that want to destroy Israel and also
want to destroy America. And yet an attorney by the name of Stanley
Cohen, a self-hating Jew, may become the lawyer, and offering to be the
lawyer for Bin Laden, the Arab terrorist. Stanley Cohen defended Hamas
terrorists and now is defending Bin Laden. Stanley Cohen's office, for
your information, is located at [address deleted], and that's in
Manhattan. His office number is [deleted]. Stanley Cohen is a traitor to
the Jews. He is a traitor to America and all the victims of the World
Trade Center bombing, all those innocent people of all different
backgrounds. Their fingers point at this greedy pig, Cohen, and they
scream out for justice.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2392.html>
- - - - -
06) Equal Right to Fear: In Public Outrage and Official Hunt, Some Face
Special Terrors
Chisun Lee (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
So many people survived on the kindness of strangers the morning jetliners
demolished the World Trade Center. Not one Sikh man, however, although the
cries of "terrorist" from the four men who chased him may have driven him
faster away from the collapsing buildings. In the nervous days that
followed, people were grateful to return home unscathed from the most
ordinary of errands--unlike the elderly South Asian couple in Flushing who
were pelted from the back with stones when they ventured out to buy
groceries. Houses of worship were havens of peace--but not always for the
country's 7 million Muslims, when mosques became targets for vandals. The
sight of a uniform meant security and hope--not so for the two Bangladeshi
commuters forced to open pockets and bags for police inspection on a subway
platform in Kew Gardens.
The attacks of September 11 killed without regard to color or faith, yet
their aftermath has quickly divided our ranks. Public anger and an official
manhunt arose naturally from a collective fear, but for some they portend
special terrors--not just bombs or tainted tap water, but hateful violence
and even unjust imprisonment. As everyone longs for the freedom from fear,
some would settle merely for the right to fear just like everyone else.
Several innocent people in different parts of the country have been killed,
apparently in acts of misguided vengeance. South Asians and Middle
Easterners abandoned lifelong customs, donning T-shirts and jeans to dodge
the hostility. Their children stayed home from schools, which got rougher
than usual for them. By the end of last week, the Council on American-
Islamic Relations (CAIR) in D.C. had received over 500 reports of anti-
Muslim discrimination, ranging in severity from epithets to murder. "We've
received in one week what we would receive in a year," said spokesman
Ibrahim Hooper.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2394.html>
- - - - -
09) Slowing the Ashcroft Act: Haste Could Lay Waste to Liberty
Sharon Lerner (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
The terror of September 11 has set the stage for a profoundly un-American
legislative response: passing bills into law hastily and without debate. In
Washington as in Albany, freneticism has taken hold of lawmakers.
On September 16 at 9 p.m., New York State legislators met in a special
session to consider proposed anti-terrorism legislation that had, until the
air attacks of that week, been gathering dust in a Senate committee. Less
than 24 hours later, without public discussion, negotiation, or so much as
one letter from a constituent, the New York State Anti-Terrorism Act of
2001 became law.
"They rushed to judgment," says Donna Lieberman, interim director of the
New York Civil Liberties Union. "They overreacted." The law applies the
death penalty to terrorist crimes--a change that allows for vengeance, but
will likely do little to discourage future suicide missions. A provision
that particularly concerns Lieberman broadens the definition of terrorism
to include people who intend to change government policy--even if that
government is our own. Citizens should fear "the inappropriate and
unconstitutional use of that provision to discourage free expression," she
says.
Down in Washington, just two days after the crisis began, the Senate voted
in the middle of the night to broaden wiretapping laws. But that was only
the beginning. If Attorney General John Ashcroft had had his way, the
largest piece of legislation--the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, or ATA, a
broad package of proposals that would affect everything from Internet use
to immigration rights, criminal procedure, and trade sanctions--would also
have sailed through without argument. On Monday, promoting the bill before
the House Judiciary Committee, he declared: "We need to unleash every
possible tool in the war against terrorism and do so promptly."
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2395.html>
- - - - -
10) "The New Terrorism: How the Cold War and Its Aftermath Fueled Islamic
Militancy"
Jennifer Gould (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
Looking back, the Nazi trail from Kristallnacht to Auschwitz is crystal
clear.
So, too, the path of radical, militant Islamic fundamentalism to the World
Trade Center attack.
Terrorism experts saw it coming. In Afghanistan, women are prisoners,
ancient Buddha statues are destroyed, and Hindus are forced to wear yellow,
the way Jews under Hitler were forced to wear a yellow Star of David. The
World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, a TWA flight mysteriously crashed in
1996, two U.S. embassies were bombed in 1998, and the U.S.S. Cole was
attacked last year.
U.S. think-tank reports published before September 11 outlined how
susceptible the U.S. was to terror attacks and how unprepared the country
is for acts of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, cyber-, and
conventional terrorism.
The new terrorism has its roots in Cold War intrigue. It spread like a
lethal weed during the era of post-Communist ethnic conflict that rose from
the rubble of the Soviet empire. Just as in World War II, the world has
awakened late. It is already clich� to say that after the World Trade
Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks--which turned peaceful civilian planes
into weapons of mass destruction--nothing will ever be the same again. But
the promise of post-Cold War peace ended long ago.
During the Cold War, Americans and Soviets trained and funded various
military groups to fight proxy wars around the world. Such wars were
generally self-contained. They were not a threat to world stability because
the countries, from Afghanistan to Angola, were seen as pawns in a greater
game. Although the Soviet Union trained terrorists and funded rogue states,
Moscow had the power to hold rogue states in check. Similarly, CIA-
supported death squads--a permanent stain on America's conscience--tended to
operate within defined borders. All that has changed.
In 1989, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, their 10-year version of
Vietnam, and civilians danced on the Berlin Wall. In January 1991, the U.S.
launched the six-week Persian Gulf War. That December, the Soviet Union
dissolved, and the U.S. won the Cold War. It was the dawn of a new era, a
unipolar world with the U.S. as leader. That alone was bound to piss some
people off. Instead of increasing its vigilance, Washington pulled out of
many old Cold War haunts and abandoned its allies, from Kurds who fought
Saddam Hussein to Afghans who battled the Soviets.
The dawn was supposed to be peaceful, with guns melting to butter as
military-industrial complexes in the East and West began partial conversion
to civilian use. Military budgets were to be slashed and social welfare
programs expanded.
It was not to be.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2396.html>
- - - - -
11) John Ashcroft�s New America: The Changed Lives of Arabs in the U.S. --
And
What a Declaration of War Would Really Mean
James Ridgeway (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As part of the Bush administration's promise not to
send Arab Americans to concentration camps, the FBI has been holding
sympathetic meetings with top Arab American leaders to guarantee speedy
prosecution of any World Trade Center backlash hate crimes. "We have had a
horrible relationship with the FBI," says Abdeen Jabara, an Arab American
attorney in Manhattan and past president of the American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee, referring to harassment in the past. "So this is
a positive step. Now they feel they need the support and cooperation of the
Arab and the Muslim communities."
Nonetheless, with war fever running wild, Arab Americans--or anyone who
looks like them--are easy targets. There have been 300 instances of attacks
on Arab Americans since September 11, according to the Arab American
Institute. Meanwhile, a special committee reportedly proposed to
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta that airports be equipped with
facial-recognition systems. As travelers go through security checkpoints,
the systems would flash to law enforcement agencies, where they could be
instantly compared to supposed terrorist profiles. Agents would immediately
be dispatched to pick up any suspicious-looking persons. (In 1972,
President Richard Nixon set up a task force called Operation Boulder. It
required every person with an Arabic surname to undergo a security check
before receiving a visa.)
This new security system might be coordinated through Bush's new Office of
Homeland Security. The office will try to pull together the functions of 40
federal, state, and local agencies under one czar, Thomas Ridge, who'll be
resigning his position as Pennsylvania governor to take the new cabinet-
level post. The agency is also charged with developing plans to protect
transportation, power, and food systems.
In order to combat terrorism, Attorney General John Ashcroft is asking
Congress to let the government use wiretaps more freely, and arrest and
deport people without warrants or hearings. There's congressional
opposition to the legislation, but that's not stopping Ashcroft, who's
already operating as if the new rules were in place. By issuing an
emergency order, Ashcroft will allow the Immigration and Naturalization
Service authority to hold people 48 hours (the current limit is 24), so as
"to establish an alien's true identity." And he proposes to go well beyond
48 hours in an "emergency or other extraordinary circumstance." Thus, the
INS could hold a person indefinitely without bringing any charges.
Meanwhile, the government has stopped disclosing arrests of material
witnesses in the World Trade Center attack, on grounds that it harms grand-
jury proceedings. So the public will never know how many people in that
category are being held. Initially, the Justice Department said it was
detaining an estimated 115 people on immigration charges. When that figure
was challenged by reporters, Mindy Tucker, the Justice Department
spokesperson, told The Washington Post that the department will no longer
issue any reports. Thus you could be held indefinitely on immigration
charges and nobody would ever know it. And Bush himself, along with
spokespeople for various departments, has introduced a basic information
blackout on military operations.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2399.html>
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12) Technology and Its Discontents: Cyber-libertarians, Technologists, and
Congress Wrangle Over Electronic Privacy Issues During Wartime
Brendan I. Koerner (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
Technology has been a popular scapegoat in recent years, shouldering the
blame for everything from Columbine (all those violent video games) to the
economy's recent nosedive (all those nefarious dotcoms). So it was scant
surprise when technology was labeled a minor culprit in the horrors of
September 11. When word leaked that Osama bin Laden's suspected minions
likely encrypted their electronic messages, communicated via free e-mail
accounts, and even made their fateful airline reservations on
Travelocity.com, the hand-wringing commenced. If only the networked world
were better policed, congressmen and Fox News talking heads contended, then
perhaps the twin towers would still stand today.
A few noted cyber-libertarians, such as Electronic Frontier Foundation
founder (and ex-Grateful Dead lyricist) John Perry Barlow, were quick to
defend the Internet's wild and woolly character, stressing that an
unregulated cyberspace is essential to public discourse. Free-software guru
Eric Raymond circulated a long-winded, pro-civil-liberties spiel to like-
minded technologists, though his zealous insistence that more lenient
handgun laws would have prevented the hijackings made the missive seem
kooky and ill-timed.
Patriotic bluster drowned out the online idealists. Wartime means hardship,
and electronic privacy suddenly seemed like a needless luxury. Congressmen
assured the public that civil liberties would be preserved as we prepare
for a long, potentially bloody campaign. "There will be . . .
inconvenience," said Republican Representative Dick Armey of Texas, in a
comment typical of the post-attack session. "But we will not violate
people's basic rights as we make this nation more secure." Still,
legislators did not hesitate to bolster the cops' power to monitor
electronic communications. On September 13, Congress passed the Combating
Terrorism Act of 2001 (CTA), which lowers the legal standards necessary for
the FBI to deploy its infamous Carnivore surveillance system. Carnivore,
recently renamed DCS1000 in a public-relations maneuver, is a computer that
the Feds attach to an Internet service provider; once in place, it scans e-
mail traffic for "suspicious" subjects�which, in the current climate, could
be something as innocent as a message with the word "Allah" in the header.
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2400.html>
- - - - -
13) The Return of Censorship: War Means Never Having to Tell the Truth
Cynthia Cotts (Village Voice)
26 Sep 01
Something is burning this week, but it's not the site of the former World
Trade Center. It's what's left of the First Amendment--and every self-
respecting journalist should sign up for the rescue mission. Of course, by
the time the first war of the 21st century is over, there may not be much
left of what liberals used to call free speech.
In its place has come a heinous kind of propaganda in which antiwar
sentiment is dimmed and right-wing pundits denounce their counterparts on
the left as madmen and enemies-from-within. According to the party line,
the public must choose: Either give up your right to free speech or live in
the terrorists' camp forevermore. And since the public is willing to make
the sacrifice, goes the argument, the press should be, too. During wartime,
you see, anyone who criticizes the government is a traitor, and any
journalist with access to military intelligence a potential threat to
national security.
The fallout started soon after the WTC attack, when the Justice Department
sought the power to tap voice mail and e-mail without a court order.
According to Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom
Forum, "In such an atmosphere, voices of dissent grow silent, probing
questions by the press are viewed as unpatriotic and subversive, and
whistle-blowers within the government are quieted."
Indeed, McMasters says, if a proposed ban on leaks of classified
information had been in place last week when Orrin Hatch told reporters
that the U.S. had intercepted a call from a suspected terrorist, Hatch
"could be facing a felony charge." The Pentagon was not pleased and the
White House quickly stanched the information flow to Congress.
Fear of being blacklisted may explain why mainstream media are downplaying
all kinds of stories that connect the WTC attack to ill-conceived homegrown
policies--from America's decision to train Afghan rebels in the 1980s to
U.S. support of Israel's crackdown on Palestinians to U.S. sanctions
against Iraq, which are believed to have caused the deaths of some 500,000
children.
Those are uncomfortable stories to tell. But journalism is not a popularity
contest, and in a democracy, there is no requirement that we offer
unconditional support for a war. "The prosecution of war involves political
decisions," says David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation. "The
commander in chief need not be micromanaged, but he also need not be given
a blank check. The media should do all it can to provide the full context
of the decision-making process."
<http://www.anti-fascism.org/story/story-h1/2393.html>
* * * * *
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
__________________________________________________________________________
FASCISM:
We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget.
(No permission required for noncommercial reproduction)
- - - - -
back issues archived via:
<ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/tinaf/>
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